Health Care--What Went Wrong: The Official kf Version

Health Care--What Went Wrong: The Official kf Version

In an email not intended for publication, alert kausfiles
reader J does a better job than kaus
at summarizing what's (so far) gone wrong on health care:

Obama does indeed appear to have misjudged the issue. The core of the issue was his statement that providing universal coverage and controlling long term costs were the same issue
.[**] This sounded phony, but he then let people think that he really believed that -- and of course he probably did, since why say it at that early stage if he did not believe it? Then he of course could not be specific about how he was going to achieve these immense long term savings, so that justified the suspicion about rationing, death panels, and so on. In other words, to the very large number of people who have adequate insurance now, he did not stress that he was going to improve their situation (by assuring that the could keep coverage if they changed jobs or lost their jobs ), but that he was going to make it worse by casting doubt on whether what they have now could continue. ....

That is just politically extremely unwise -- to say the health care issue is about whether we can keep everything we have or rather have to give a lot of it up so we can have universal coverage. And who gives it up, under this view -- not the rich, but the elderly, the average worker with health care coverage, and so on. The Republicans found this issue, as who would not have, and have been mainlining it, successfully. [E.A.]